5 Money Things You Can Do Before 2020 Ends

The year is ending, and a new one is starting. Get a good start for 2021:

Top up your SRS/CPF SA

Time required: probably 2 minutes if you already have an SRS account, and another 5 minutes if you need to apply for one.

Get dollar-for-dollar tax relief when you contribute to your Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) account up to your contribution cap which is currently $15,300 for Singaporean/PR and $35,700 for foreigners. You have to do it before the end of 31st December 2020 to qualify for tax savings for this assessment year. DBS, the bank my SRS account is with, specifically states the cutoff timing to be 7PM on 31st December.

You may also top up your CPF Special Account to get dollar-for-dollar tax relief on up to $7,000, and it should be processed almost instantly if you use PayNow.

Do check your own eligibility for tax relief before proceeding.

Donate to a charity

Time required: a minute to decide how much you can spare, and another minute to finish the donation

Speaking of tax relief, consider donating to a charity. Helping an eligible charitable is not only a good deed, but also provides 250% tax relief. I hope you take part in the fundraiser I’m hosting for Children’s Cancer Foundation! We’ve raised more than $3,000 in a few days, and I hope we can reach $5,000 by the end of this eventful year.

Get up to $600 for signing up 2 credit cards

Time required: probably 5 minutes each

Citi and DBS are both giving you $300 each if you are new to their credit cards (or have cancelled your last card with them more than 12 months ago). Citi’s offer ends 31st December, and DBS’s will finish soon after. See the full list of eligible cards and promos here, or sign up below:

Transfer funds out of poor yielding accounts

Time required: 5 to 10 minutes for each new account you are applying for, and another 5 minutes to fund the account.

Recurring theme for news articles in 2020: 1, Covid. 2, bank rates dropping. Bank deposit rates have been gutted over the past year, with new ones taking effect as the year turns 2021.

If you’ve been procrastinating on this, the upcoming long weekend might be a good time to consider better places for your savings, although you probably need at most 30 minutes to settle this.

Review your insurance coverage

Time required: Well, this is probably going to be tedious…

This is something your insurance agent would probably get you to do, but I think it’s best if you do it yourself… because reasons. There’s a wealth of resources on this topic, and I wrote an article on what are the types on coverage a typical working adult in Singapore should be looking at.

It’s not as exciting as investments or immediately gratifying like credit card rewards, but insurance is something important that you should get settled as soon as possible, and a new year might just be the thing to push you to finally do it.

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What about you?

What other money stuff are you looking to do before the year ends? Let me know!

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